Starshimmers
by mimi 007
Summary: The life of a mortal is short when you are the age of 500 and have 500 more in front of you. The two species, humans and nations, should be kept apart in a romantic sense, and the most unromantic nation, Prussia, agrees. Love shouldn't mix, and especially not with him. So how come he sits here, beneath the stars, and thinks of the life he has shared with a mortal girl? One-shot.


This is my very first gift ever made, I think. It is for Malentia malentia . deviantart . com . It only seems fitting that the first should be for her, as she is the first person ever to have made a picture for one of my stories, and it still means everything to me. I am a bit unsatisfied with how it ended compared to my first intentions, but I can no longer change it without feeling that I destroy it.

The credit for the idea should go to her as well. The reason I should make this was that she draws and I write, and like I can see pictures that I am unable to draw she saw a story that she was unable to write out. So she asked me. I just hope the result is satisfactory.

I do not own the characters or the setup of the story. All credit for Hetalia goes to Himaruya Hidekaz, and the credit for the idea should be brought to Malentia. All I have done is use them in my own, personal amusement.

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The stars are so beautiful… It hasn't ever changed, has it? I have been looking at these stars for centuries, but it wasn't before you they ever got fascinating. They can guide your way in war and travel, when the sun has left, but damn, I otherwise thought them boring. But when I met you, you didn't think so… the first time you asked me if I wanted to watch them with you I was staring at you with disbelief, as though what you said was the lamest joke ever.

Heh… My friends would laugh they asses off if they saw me now, sitting on the terrace of the house I share with mein Bruder, and looking up into the cloudless night, watching them with you. What disbelief there would be written in Francis' and Toni's faces if they found the Awesome Me sitting like this, and Denny would laugh at me and call me girly. I'd hit him back and tell him I weren't.

Maybe I actually am. You really taught me so many things… like the beauty of the stars I now look upon. Not only that, though. You taught me to love. You and Bruder both. Both of you showed me that there is more in the world than the power I hungered for. And without you I would still be as awkward around women as Bruder is. How the others would laugh if they knew my situation back then, and Lizzie would the loudest. You taught me that beauty wasn't purely on the outside… You taught me that a bond can reach so deep.

You taught me that marriage isn't an embarrassment… I have always taken pride in never having had a relationship with another country, that I never had a bond like that. Specs would stare so fiercely if he knew, furious, and the others would be laughing at me. Still I always have the ring in my pocket. I never told them of you… I have never told any of them.

I could never tell them of you, y'know? You're too precious to me. It's so unawesome, really, to be affected by another so deeply. You are in my heart, locked away for only me to look upon and nurture and embrace. We have so many memories together, and I can see every one of them even with my eyes open.

I remember the very first time I saw you. I'd nearly just won a war, kicked Specs' sorry, pompous ass. I sat atop a horse in my formerly Austrian province, Silesia, enjoying the aftermath of yet another successful protection of _my_ area of land. Upon my shoulder was my little, awesome bird, and Fritz was there as well, oh dear Fritz, sitting beside me and smiling to the people as they dared come out from hiding and hold their market. People were watching as we rode by, awed at the awesomeness of me and my best boss, and I was grinning and smirking down upon them.

That was when I saw you. You were… 13 at the time? 12? You looked so mature, holding a basket of eggs from the hens at your family's little farm and offering them to strangers. Your face held nearly no signs of youth even though the rest of your body lacked some… your breasts weren't that big, you can't deny me that! Prominent, but not big. And your hips were still a bit too… y'know, narrow, but you were just a girl…

Not that it really was the first I noticed. Honestly… it actually wasn't. It was your hair. The day was overcast, but just as I rode by the sun shimmered through the clouds and the glow of copper in your auburn hair got my attention. I turned to you. I watched you for a while as you didn't even look at us, the magic in your hair playing as you called for buyers. I couldn't take my eyes from your face.

You were all freckles and sun-kissed skin, your nose and your mouth fine without looking too delicate or fragile. Your eyes caught me as well, though… they were like light sapphire. Contrasting to the copper in the reddish-brown hair the sun made them look like the shallowest, blue water of the Mediterranean Sea. And they were clever, calm, intriguing…

I do not know if I loved you already then. A part of me probably did. But when I came home I could not forget the little peasant girl selling eggs. Other than my bosses and the knights and soldier I had never had much contact with humans, and at this point Hungary was still the only female I really ever had known closer… I never really thought much of humans. I thought more of wars. Of land and glory.

Now one entered my dreams and refused to leave.

Half a year went by before Fritz got tired of my sighing and complaining about trouble of sleep. He might have recognized some signs of… emotions, or whatever you would call it. Pfft. I already told you the story, didn't I?

A morning, I think in the spring, my boss told me to pull myself together. She's too young for me, I claimed, but all he did was snort. "The whole of the world is too young for you, Gil. In your situation you have to grasp love when it is given to you."

A push out the door and he told me the access to the castle was closed for me until I had found 'the girl I loved'. He knew me too well, but I was still furious and stood outside the door pounding until he came out from a window in the night, when I finally slept with my back leant against the wood of the door, and threw a bucket of water over me. Both I and Gilbird were drenched to the bones.

"Get going!" he'd yelled, and though I cursed him for being a stupid idiot with stupid homosexual tendencies and stupid, falsely romantic claims I followed his order, ignoring the smug grin behind me and the tunes of the flute as he began playing a love song for me. At that moment, like so many other times, I hated the old man, but I still loved him all the same.

Besides, I wouldn't have chased you down without him. I guess I owe him thanks… even though he died… But he knew I was grateful anyway. Old Fritz knew everything about me.

I rode to Silesia in four days and killed a good horse in the process. I realized here that I had actually really missed you… the glow in your hair, the calm in your eyes… and even as I galloped the poor animal to death to reach the market I mocked and taunted myself like I would have any other love-stricken idiot. It was beneath me to be a stupid romantic, and yet I was pushing a horse every last bit to reach a village where I had seen a girl I hadn't even spoken to.

The horse fell from exhaustion just an hour's walk from the village and after killing it off I went into the city. Speaking to everyone of a girl with blue eyes and auburn hair, asking if they had seen her. They were wary of me, frightened as I spoke to them in my military uniform with both sword and gun in my belt. It only made them all the more willing to satisfy my demands.

After a little while of searching I was led to a small collection of farms a further half day walk back past my dead animal. When I got there I was certain I had done a Specs and taken a wrong turn down the straight path somewhere. The sun was setting, the dark moving in, and I needed a place to stay the night but the houses were small, poor, not able to hold the girl I dreamed of.

As I walked between the two rows of houses I wondered if I should turn back. If I should give up the search and beg Fritz permission to get in even though I never met her. Then I saw a twinkle of copper out the corner of my eyes and I turned, hoping to find the girl… only to see a woman a little younger than Fritz watching me with the same blue eyes as the girl I was looking for.

For a short, confused moment I thought years had passed. When you have lived about 500 years, twenty soon seems like nothing. Had she grown? Had she become old while I had been away? Had I actually been complaining at home for twenty-thirty years without noticing?

The woman asked me if something was wrong, looking warily at my uniform. I was about to ask if it might be possible for me to stay the night so I could investigate. Then the girl came through and I froze, my heart beating in my chest in a way I had never tried before. It took me forever to move again, forever to walk past the woman, forever to speak.

But you know what happened afterward. I took your hand. Raised it to my lips and kissed your dirty knuckles. Then let the hand go and asked if I could stay the night.

In the beginning your father disapproved. Even after he knew I was a high ranking officer in the Prussian army he didn't want to let you go. There is no doubt he loved you, and he shook his head when I asked to take you with me.

Had I not been as deeply devoted to you already then I would have taken you away without his consent, cackling in joy of what I had managed. But when I felt the anger and fury that had caused me to stand up as I hated my smallness and had made me declare war against the pompous, weak aristocrat I saw it in your eyes. The fear, as you, a young girl of 13, was getting bargained over by a strange, high-ranking soldier with a yellow bird floating around his head.

And so I sat back before my temper made me start a war with the human daring to defy me – this really was a first in the case of anyone but Old Fritz. For the first time in my life I really noticed the emotions in another person, the discomfort of you, and I acted to them.

"I'll stay here for a week. If she wants to come with me after that I will take her. If not you can keep her."

It took me half of that week to even get comfortable around you, but we spend every hour of the days together… I was as scared of you as you were of me, for you were a girl and I was a nation inexperienced in listening or feeling or doing anything but think of power and wealth.

But one night we stayed out after dark. Though we had been silent until then you… did you decide to trust me? You showed me a place in the woods a bit from the fields of the tiny collection of houses that was your home. There was a clearing and you spread out an old, worn blanket, lying down on the ground and staring upwards.

For a moment I had been looking at you, impatient, waiting for you to do something. You didn't and I became restless. Near 40 times your age and still you were calmer and more mature… it has always been like that, I think. I nearly left you to lie there, unable to accept the stillness as worth my time, when you spoke to me for the first time ever, letting me hear your beautiful, young voice.

"What do you think of the stars?"

"What the hell do you mean?"

"What do you think? … I think it is God's way of counting. Every soul that passes away goes up there, so he can remember who's gone. He shows them to us so we can see how beautiful Heaven is and gives us reason to be good people."

"Really?" I asked with a grin and unconsciously sat unceremoniously on the ground, causing Gilbird to complain as he bumped off my shoulder, and lifted my chin up to watch the darkening sky and the twinkles slowly peering through for the veil of night.

"Yeah. I'm sure. My sister, Kat, is up there, I know. And Balt, too. I can feel them."

"Balt?" I asked, looking down on you with a tilted head.

"Yeah, Baltzer. He was my friend back… before. Before he died from the sickness that took Kat…"

Then my gaze moved back to the stars again. "If you are right then I understand God. All those names and all those people… Like my diaries." The word slipped over my mouth and I looked down again, grinning quite sheepishly. "Well, they help me keep track of the years… the diaries…"

From then we could talk of anything, but it was usually in that clearing, whether night or day… we were alone there. You told me of the life and the worries of a peasant girl, of how the harvest could be bad this year because of the lacking rain, how your newborn little brother might die from hunger if your mother didn't get more food, how you missed a new sister in the horde of seven brothers.

Everything about you interested me. When the week passed I was certain you would say yes to leave behind your life… but you didn't. Your family meant too much and as a country without my brother I couldn't understand it. I stormed out your house and went back to my boss, not in any way able to understand the emotions in my heart.

For a year Fritz made military plans, played flute and trained the men without me. I sat in a gloomy corner, for the first time meeting a defeat I couldn't manage – it was a defeat outside of war. Again my dear, old boss thought it necessary to save the country and me, and this time he went with me to your house.

What a surprise it was for you and your parents when _the_ great Frederick came by your house and begged for you to follow – of course with a great gift for the family left behind. Your body had changed, become older, but your mind was the same as before. But now you thought yourself ready to part with your family as a good girl of 14 years should when a man wanted you.

For a few years we could be together. You were out of sight, hidden in a servant's dress, for no one wanted a peasant girl present at the high tables, but we were together. Somehow you managed not to become a spoiled brat in your new environment. After a year our relationship evolved from just talking about everything and you showing me the greatness of music and artistic works that Fritz wanted me to appreciate to actually kiss a bit. Another year and the both of us were ready to take it yet another step, and for the first time I touched a woman. Like a proud and protective father Fritz kept an eye on both of us, as if to make sure I didn't hurt you and that you wouldn't disappoint me.

In his spare time he'd be with us, and you soon became the 'daughter he never had', like I was the 'noisy brat he had been forced to adopt but had come to like'. For a little while I dared to think everything good, but as you grew older and your body changed and matured, I slowly realized that my body should change too. And that it wouldn't.

Suddenly I was scared, and when the campaign against Poland began to collect my precious pieces of land that the weakling and his Lithuanian doll had stolen from me I was nearly happy. Still you didn't suspect anything when you kissed me goodbye with teary eyes, trying to get me to promise you I wouldn't die in the fighting. You nearly begged of me not to go to war. I told you nothing would happen, laughed and grinned and didn't really understand how serious you were in the start.

The look in your eyes was deep with worry and love and fear, and for the first time ever I thought twice about starting a war. What if something went wrong? What if Poland and Lithuania were actually able to fight away me and Russia (there is no doubt Specs would be that weak, so we don't count him)? What if I was extinguished like it had happened to other great nations?

I couldn't think like that, though, and I turned away with a smirk and told them that none could ever threaten The Awesomeness with Gilbird chirping in confirmation. Being more mature than I you simply shook your head resignedly and mumbled the sentence that could always make Old Fritz laugh. "How did a man like you ever get such an important position?"

I never wanted you to know how. But when I came back from Poland after being with the troops in war for just half a year, the weakling too weak to even truly fight back though he claims it was due to 'former inner struggle', bleeh, you had gotten a new idea. You wanted kids, you wanted to be married, and you wanted me to be both the father and the husband.

I was afraid of you to find out what I was. A part of me was certain you'd think I'd deceived you and leave, going back to the Silesia I had just saved from Austria's claws again and live with your family. I told you that I would agree to have kids – for in all honesty, how bad could an awesome, little mini-me be? – but I said that as long as I was a soldier it was too risky to marry.

You didn't like the deal and looked at me with hard, blue eyes for a very long while, as if I didn't make sense, but in the end you complied. Besides… I couldn't marry. Marrying wasn't me.

After everything being in vain for five years, with children, you finally began noticing it… the danger. The smallest of wrinkles were beginning to form around the corners of your eyes and mouth even though you still had years of youth in front of you, but you knew I had to be at least seven years older than you. And I looked to be your age by then, if not even younger than you, not a single new wrinkle crinkling my forehead or around my mouth.

While I could see the question in your eyes you didn't speak of it. Being around you became hard, so hard, and I wished for you to never have been there. I loved you so much, and every night when we didn't make love you'd take me out under the sky and greet your very first love, Baltzer, and your big sister, Katherine, and tell me of them. The thought of death truthfully frightened me, but if the choice of never meeting you wasn't possible I'd rather spend my life with you as mortal.

Then I could age with you, be with you… die with you. Forever hold your hand, for you would never leave me. Death scared me, even though I knew I would sit in the night sky above the world and wink down at all my friends. But aging and being with you was better than never aging and having to part ways due to you either fearing me for being unnatural or hating me for lying.

Another thing that hurt you was how your body never got with child, and you would hold my hand and ask me if you were wrong. A part of me was certain you weren't and that a nation probably just couldn't have kids, but explaining it would mean for me to explain everything… and that I couldn't. I was fearless in battle with my awesome men able to extinguish enemies quickly, but in the other parts of life I sucked ass. I was scared to hurt you, scared of you leaving, scared of the aging of your body and the thought that life wasn't endless.

What happened next you know so well, and it pains the both of us.

My silence made you grow dark and moody. I thought you were stopping to love me and slowly we stopped even talking. When you went down the hall, acting like the servant you were claimed to be when you weren't in my presence, I no longer looked up to send you a glance of a smile. Gilbird had come to love the both of us equally much, but at some point you got so depressed you even stopped seeing him.

Heh… I really suck at relationships. Might be the reason why you were the only one…

Once more the one saving us was Old Fritz. Though he really was getting _old_ by the time, nearing the seventy, he came over to me and grabbed the back of my neck forcefully and told me not to treat someone I love like I did. When I told him the problem – or rather, shouted – he already knew it and told me I should pull myself together. Fifteen years had we been together and yet we were not married, and now the lack of talk between us was destroying everything.

In truth it was more. The inability to have children. The fear of losing her. My responsibility. My continued awkwardness around emotions from hundreds of years without having to face them. The problems just all reached back to me and my immortality, making me the sinner. Fritz demanded of me to find you and talk to you.

If I hadn't… if I hadn't done that we would never have been together for real. Your beautiful, blue eyes refused to look into my eyes when I got to your room with Gilbird trailing behind, angry at me for letting you be here like this. When we started talking you yelled at me for the first time ever, telling me how cruel I was for making you be a servant if I really loved you, yelling at me how you couldn't understand you ever wanted to marry me, how you couldn't believe I refused to speak to you, how sorry you were for not being able to do what I wanted of you and bear children.

And you yelled to me how people in love should be able to talk to one another.

Unlike what you could think I didn't yell back. I had already gotten my rage and anger out on Fritz and instead I stood and watched you with tired eyes. Somehow it got you to quiet, the calmness in your heart and gaze that had attracted me from the beginning allowing me to speak and be listened to. And when those orbs gave me permission and that auburn hair glowed in the candlelight I spoke.

When I told you that I was the incarnation of the very land within which you lived you didn't act as I thought you would. Not that I really had thought anything. You didn't even look surprised when you finally looked into my eyes. "Then it all makes sense" was all you said before you moved over to your mirror to fix your hair.

You took it so calmly, like you already understood everything. I, on the other hand, experienced something very different from anything I had tried in hundreds of years. So rarely I couldn't even recognize the tightening of my throat or the pressure behind the eyes, or how one's breathing got harder and one's heart seemed to beat faster.

While you sat in front of the mirror, putting your beautiful hair up in a bun, I fell down upon your bed in a fit of sobs with Gilbird surprised and panicking above me. I guess it surprised you, too, to actually see me show such emotion. That was the first time I ever spoke to you about anything, wasn't it? I think it was. The first time I expressed concern or fear or sadness… The first time I really trusted you. Before that I only ever smiled or pouted or scowled…

You reacted immediately, moved over beside me and held me tightly and told me that you weren't mad at me. Through the sobs I managed to tell you it wasn't the problem. You could be mad all you wanted – I deserved it for taking over your life like I had – but I just… I never wanted you to leave me. And after near two years of growing coldness it seemed so likely.

I told you I thought you would hate me because I stole you away while knowing our relationship could never be any more. I took you away from what could have been a normal, happy life due to some sort of obsession I suffered from. I told you I was sorry that you would never get children because of me, and that I had already lost my grandfather and my teachers from the time of the great Teutonic Knights and all my former bosses. And I finally told you that I loved you.

And then I told you my greatest fear. You remember it, don't you? I can never forget the look on your face when I told, the hurt I put in your heart as you hugged me. I don't think you could forget it… "I'm afraid I'll stop loving you… If… If you grow old. Wh-when you become wrinkled and ugly…" It was only because I used the word 'shallow' before you that you didn't storm out of the room in anger. For that… that frightened me the most. The possibility that the love I had lived with and lived on for fifteen years could disappear with sagging skin and the loss of youth.

We both know now, here beneath the stars, that it wasn't the case.

Many others would probably have deserted me right then and there, leaving me in my pool of tears and misery upon a bed which contained one side of our relationship. You didn't. You held me and stayed with me and stroked my hair like both you and I would later do to Ludwig when he was sad or sleepy or suffered from nightmares the split nation of the many German States that he had been back in the beginning had to suffer from.

"What he says is he wants to marry you." Old Fritz. He came again, speaking true words I could never get over my lips. Standing in the doorway, old and crooked as he was becoming, he smiled at the both of us, looking delighted, at peace… loving. As if we experienced the love he had never gotten himself, as if he felt it through us.

Till the very end and beyond the wedding embarrassed me. A small year later, when you reached the age of thirty, the smallest ceremony the world as seen was held. The ring was on my finger for a single moment, then I had taken it off as not to feel trapped by the agreement I had consented to. It is not that I wasn't happy, for you know I was, but… well, yeah. It was embarrassing for me. To… admit that I was just as capable at loving as everyone else. It didn't fit me, it wasn't true.

The person probably the happiest of everyone at that wedding was Fritz, looking at us in that fatherly way. But that didn't last. The man who collected and saved and comforted me for years, who helped both my person, my people and my land to flourish, was but yet another mortal in my life, and age finally caught him. After a life filled with disappointments and victories, with the tunes of a flute and the sheets of strategic books, with a dead friend, a bitter marriage and an enlightened acquaintance, Old Fritz finally found peace some few years after we got wedded thanks to him.

You know what happened afterwards. My fights with Frederick William about keeping Fritz away from that first Frederick William's grave and follow his last will, the destruction of Fritz' reforms, the sudden need to hide you and our relationship, my sorrow… The country lived on without him, but I had personally tied myself with him and his genius mind and could not let him go.

Had you not been there and had Ludwig not arrived just five days after the death of the man I'm sure the world would have seen far less of the Prussian Empire than they did. I would have fallen apart then and there. But you were with me, and in the woods when I tried to flee from all, as though sent by God, I found a child, seemingly no older than half a year, left alone among the trees.

Blond hair, he had, and his eyes were a lighter blue than yours by a single shade. My plan of leaving the world behind and die with my dearest boss of all time was ruined by the presence of the kid, and I knew immediately what he was. He was the incarnation of the ever squabbling German States, a promise that those very states were soon ready to be united.

I also knew he was something else. My family. My brother. For the first time I experienced to really have someone other than Specs that might be claimed my own blood, or the Holy Roman Empire, who is so mixed by everything anyway that I am uncertain of his descent. Of course I loved Holy Rome, I still do, he was a little dear in my life when he wasn't being too much of a country and go against my wishes, but the child I suddenly held in my arms was…

In my heart I knew he was mein Kleiner Bruder.

Like me you loved him immediately. While I called him Bruder you spoke of him as Sohn and treated him with the care of a mother. Though slowly reaching for middle age you still wished for a child, and in Ludwig you got what you wanted. And I got a reason to stay.

I didn't tell you what he was in the beginning. I don't really know why. Maybe it was a new, irrational fear that you would turn your back to me. I had only just lost the first boss truly meaning everything to me, the first man to really make me great, and I didn't want you gone as well. I told you I found him in the woods and said I was certain he was a gift to ease my pain of yet another loss.

For the sake of survival the incarnations of nations grow fast in the beginning, and he nearly followed normal human growth in the beginning, reaching the body of a three-year-old using but four. While Fritz still weighed my heart like a tumor the two of you were able to make me smile, and the happiness in your eyes was never-ending to have a child to care for, and I was just happy that the child was at least in some way related to me.

I managed to smile again, to laugh and taunt and mock. I loved when I made Ludwig pout annoyed, and I loved it even more when the kid realized I was simply making fun of him, when the pout turned into a laugh and his face would show the carefree happiness he, as a nation, would far too soon get extinguished. The big, beautiful eyes so much like yours held an innocence I wished could stay forever, and somehow your personality passed on to him, the calm, clever nature of your eyes reflecting in his.

When I heard of the trouble with France and the turmoil the blond flirter experienced I knew I was going to war soon. It was required, for the sake of my people and the new boss I had to stay true to even though I only wanted for Fritz to come back. I wasn't afraid to leave him, though. I knew he was in your hands, and I knew you loved him.

So when war was called for again after so much time of silence I kissed your both goodbye, left Gilbird with you and moved out, telling you to take good care of my brother before joining the stupid Austrian, not even noticing how I revealed Germany's true form to you right then and there. I expected to be home soon.

We were going to war against the French Rebels. Revolutionists. Whatever they were. France was becoming a threat to the powers of Europe, and for the sake of the power I barely cared for anymore I went to war, only wanting to be back with you. Being the good nation I was I followed Fritz' example and lead my soldiers in all of the attacks, mocking Specs for sitting in the back row, nearly afraid to even touch the guns. Pitiful.

But it took me three whole years to get back, exhausted but strangely satisfied, even though my Boss had made a cowardly 'tactical retreat'. With the war some of the emptiness of Fritz' disappearance left me… I think you noticed, didn't you? I was always best at fighting – when you fight things become simple. But while the war had given me some of the old blood thirst back I just wanted to make sure the both of you were smiling.

And you were. Luddy was growing slower by the years, his aging faltering, and he was still a boy of four or five when I was back. I think you had accepted it at the time. That like you had an unnatural husband your son was weird, too. But finally having a child in your life seemed to make your love for me that much stronger, and as I let my fingers hold your slowly wrinkling hand as we stared into the stars and talked of Kat and Balt and Old Fritz and pushed my body closer against yours the kisses you gave me were deeper and longer than before.

At those times there was only one thing that could stop me from loving with you, and that was Ludwig scrambling out of his bed from yet another nightmare, the inner struggles of the German States haunting his sleep. The situations in the French revolution were only making it worse as the campaigns of Napoleon tried to suck in the German territories to his game of power.

We would both hold him and hug him as he cried, telling him the dreams were not true. Too often he woke up screaming 'don't take me away', as though someone was trying to steal him… and true to the words, someone really was looking to catch his lands. "No one will steal you," I promised him as I stroked his wheaten hair and felt just how much I loved that child. If anyone could ever equal you in being dear he would do that. "I won't let anyone take you away from me. Not ever."

The struggles in Europe continued without me, though, for a few years. Somehow the weak Frenchman had found strength to oppose every great power in Europe, and where the man's eyes had been glazed with turmoil and pain in the beginning Francis' goal was now clear and his smile big and smug.

When I left you again with Russia in tow it was for the sake of Ludwig. The German States got too threatened by the French, the revolutionaries' power risked getting too great, and the kid's dreams were more haunted than ever. You understood, letting me go to war with only a single stroke over my hair with your thin, aging hand and a kiss on the cheek, me responding by removing a strand of graying auburn from you forehead.

Ludwig felt different. Though twenty years had passed he looked but six when we parted again, and he held on to my leg and begged me not to leave, his tears soaking my pants. But I had to. I had to. So I told him to be a good soldier and stop crying.

I had only just moved to meet the French when I heard of Holy Rome's demise. Like with Old Fritz my heart grew heavy, the wound of his loss only twenty years back in a past spending hundreds. It might be true the Ludwig was dearer and closer to me than the other kid had been… but Holy Roman Empire, the cocky little brat, had been one of the few nations at the time that I had emotions towards. France was one of my steady changing allies and enemies, but I knew how gentle and weak he could be… I couldn't believe him to be so cold and so hard.

Even with the knowledge of the death I believed that. I and my bosses underestimated him gravely. The defeats rained over me in a moment, the cold look in those blue eyes oddly recognizable as he plunged into my lands and did what he could to extinguish my armies and destroy my resistance. I didn't know from where I knew the look before I found myself back home in Berlin with Gilbird hanging hopelessly on my shoulder, only a few months later, beaten and caught in France's grip with his stupid boss, Napoleon, moving along with him.

Then I recognized it as the lust for power I had seen in my mirrors all my years before you.

The cursed idiot was annoying, and his lack of response towards my snarky remarks only worsened it. It didn't stop me from saying them, but when we moved down the streets I looked for you and Ludwig, begging that you weren't there and yet wishing to see you. I was so focused on it that I didn't notice we were by Old Fritz' grave before we had gone within.

I grew silent, frozen, suddenly afraid they would touch him… suddenly afraid they would take his remains away and I was too weak to stop them. What they did do hit far harder, though, like a blow to my stomach. The small man, France's boss, told his soldiers to tip off their hats, and Francis did as ordered, holding his hat over his heart and looking upon my old boss' resting place with no trace of contempt. "If he were alive we wouldn't be here today," Napoleon said, leaving my lungs utterly empty of air.

It took everything from me to manage a comment, pain evident in my voice as well as in my face – but right then I didn't care. "Damn right you wouldn't." They all turned to look at me as Gilbird chirped in angry agreement, and the dangerous, power hungry look in France's face faltered for surprise at the sight of my shown weakness and care for the dead man. With an even deepened respect Napoleon sent me a nod and turned, his soldiers leaving with him.

Only France waited for a moment, looking at me for a small while longer. One of the only nations I had thought likable at the time, though at that very moment I hated him deeply. If I didn't get out of the room soon I'd be crying my heart out in front of him, and I didn't want that. But what he said wasn't cruel. "It will fade, Prussia. With time." His hand moved up to his heart, this time the one not holding the hat, as though he was trying to push it out of his chest.

When he left I stayed by Fritz' grave for the rest of the day.

You later said he had been by you as well. That France had passed you, looked at Ludwig and asked who it was. You had answered 'my son'. You said you could see some form of knowledge in the eyes of the idiotic flirt. After staring for a little while longer, you told me he moved on.

The next many years are but a blur to me. Even if his treatment was kind to a certain degree I could think of nothing but revenge. He had shown Old Fritz respect, yeah, sure, but it felt like it was only done to humiliate me and my current, far less impressive bosses. I barely looked at you… or at Ludwig. I followed the ongoing war closely, tried to collect my strength, found only one thing able to satisfy my sudden hate… I had to smash him, destroy him. The enemy seemed unstoppable, but I was determined to break him to pieces.

When I finally looked at you again, the Frenchmen finally defeated and me home from war, you had grown… old. Your hair no longer shone like copper in the sun… it was gray, and a dull color of that. The cheeks once kissed with freckles and warmed by the sun sagged, you body seemed more skin that muscles and bones… Time had passed, a whole of 8 years to be exact, and finally not a single part of you could be called youthful. Ludwig was beside you, barely looking much older than when I had gone into a state of mad revenge, but the look in his eyes told me time had gone by. And the look in the eyes of little, yellow bird on Ludwig's shoulder told exactly the same.

"Am I old and ugly now?" you asked. Was it because I had been staring? For I think I did. I looked away, embarrassed and hurt by the repetition of my own words.

You were still silent, and I knew you were angry. Just to be sure I had kept our ring in the many years I reached for my pocket and, luckily, found the gold within. Once more I had ignored you, pushed you away, and I still don't know if the decision having been unconscious this time made it better or worse. When I realized you were serious I looked back up, actually taking in your state.

I found my answer to be mixed. You… yeah, you _were_ old. Your body was forever changed, impossible to recover, and while you were no longer attractive, or directly beautiful, ugly was over the top. But I knew one thing for sure, and hoping to answer it I closed the distance between us to give you a kiss.

Not accepting it you turn your cheek, making my lips connect with them. "Am I?" you repeated coldly, angrily.

"You were already old the day we met." Your eyes turned to me, and I could see that one thing hadn't been touched by age. One thing was still endlessly beautiful. Your eyes, in all the years I have known you, never changed. I lifted my hand, my own, young hand, unchanged by time, and touched it to your cheek. "It seems you body finally decided to follow." I sent you a grin, and then I had won you back, made the warmth come into your eyes.

"I don't care…" Tears came into my eyes then, before I even said the first meaningful thing. "I don't care how you look." A part of me was relieved. Endlessly relieved "I… I actually… don't care about how you look." You were beautiful. Just the fact that you were with me was beautiful, that you had suffered yet another slight from me.

Your hand reached for mine and caught it, thin and bony with age. "No more wars, okay? No more… no more selfishness. I… don't want to lose you again."

I was about to nod in consent when I noticed Ludwig beside us, looking up at me with silent devotion and a great bit of uncertainty. I hadn't only failed you… I had failed him as well. I had been the worst brother in the world by leaving the both of you behind in my wish for revenge, in my attempt to protect my dead, old boss. "I'm born for fighting," I argued. "And I'm born to be selfish. It isn't really my choice."

Your jaw tensed in a way I would later see Ludwig do so often and were about to leave. But I caught your wrinkled face, no longer looking like the little girl I had to bargain with her father for, and my lips met yours, kissing you as deeply as you would usually have kissed me. When I pushed back you waited for me to speak, knowing I had something to say now.

"But what about fighting together this time?" A frown moved over your face then, ready to dismiss me immediately. But I held on to your face, forcing you to listen to my words. "What about fighting for him?" My eyes moved to Ludwig who'd looked away embarrassedly when the kissing began. "I want us to be happy. I'm selfish enough to want the very best for my family – no matter what it will cost." I looked back into your eyes, looking past the wrinkles to the woman I loved. "Will you fight with me? For our family?"

Then you hugged me. Like a little girl would have when her sweetheart brought her flowers. I reached down and caught Ludwig as well, getting his nearly none-aged body into the embrace with us. For a moment we stood like that, my brother clinging to our clothes, my birds chirping happily above our heads and you holding on to me like I was the last foothold on the cliff above death. And I knew we agreed.

So we spent the next twenty years time on working on the German States, gaining awareness of the nationalism, trying together to get Ludwig's people to fight for him and his unification. We passed by Hambach, then much later Wartburg, forming protests and notice. It was helping, slowly but surely. We could feel it already then. And our little, blond kid grew bigger and stronger as we did, still slowed by the fate of an incarnation yet showing such an incredible potential even now. We spoke of a new superpower together, that he might become the next great empire. The other nations, the four supposed 'nations of power', disagreed and felt uncomfortable, but I just laughed in their faces and continued.

Towards the rest of the world I was normal… towards you I was me…

Then you grew ill. Your body began failing you when you were ten years older than Old Fritz' had been at his death, making me happy I had at least kept you for that much longer.

After struggling with the weakness of your body for three more years, fighting to keep going and keep doing things for your 'son' and my Bruder, you were bedridden in the home we had for the two of you.

Seven years after you died revolutions spread out over Europe and many German States were among them.

Nineteen years after you died William was appointed King of Prussia, and twenty years after you were gone Otto von Bismarck was appointed Minister-President.

Near the end of the century a new, great power called the German Empire had united with a blond boy looking just 14 sitting beside me among the leaders of the state.

Does that make you happy? When I tell you these things, when you see that we succeeded? I have given everything for mein Bruder….

I hope they do make you happy. In truth Ludwig can scare me at times. He is strong, greater than I have ever been. I guess you have seen the wars from up where you watch, seen what he can do, but you mustn't judge yourself. It wasn't your choice to die from us… no matter how much it hurt. I have tried my best alone, but I've never been a parent, and you know that. But you should not blame yourself for being human. I am the one who should be blamed for failing to protect him.

As I lie here, holding our ring with a hand in my pocket, I wonder which one of the lights is you, and if you smile at me. I think of Kat and Balt, who I have never met, and I imagine how happy Old Fritz' is as he can play his flute forever. I nearly see little Holy Rome as he keeps an eye on Italia, and I wonder if he hates Ludwig for the closeness that has been established between the two. Can Grandpa approve of what I have done in my life? I wonder if all of my Gilbirds end up there as well, or if God has chosen another place for them to rest.

No matter what, I love to lie here and look at the distant world of death. It reminds me of you, of the girl and the woman you were. I miss you, I miss laughing with you and holding you tight and loving you. I can no longer act all soft and lovey with Ludwig, and so I miss you more than ever. To the rest of them I'm the same, cocky me that arrived at the Baltic Shore with my white clothes and raised sword.

I don't know if I have really changed, or if that was solely for you. Are you the one blinking right now? The big star just over the tree tops? If so I hope you agree with me… or rather believe in me… I want to be more than what I was as a kid. I'm not embarrassed with my actions as a child… but as weak as it sounds I miss being able to smile to another. A real smile.

I miss you. I miss every part of you, every age of you. I know very well that it is so easy for me to come back to you. As soon as I let go I will fall into the nothingness. My country is dissolved, after all, for we have only Germany left. But I gave you a promise, and while he might seem strong and able to take care of himself, and while I may seem weak and unable to do anything anymore without my people or country, I know he is still dependent on me. If that ever stops I will slide away and back into your arms. If it doesn't, I will stay, and if he dies before he can live alone I'll die with him, and we can be together.

Ludwig doesn't remember you, by the way. I'm sorry. I have inquired about you a few times, but he was only nine or ten when you died, and years pass so quickly for countries… I hope it doesn't sadden you too much. He might just think you are a servant I got to take care of him while I worked…

… In truth I'm happy about it. If the world knows of you they will question me… right now I'm unable to love and I like to party in their eyes. It's not that they are wrong… I have met no one else but you and he who make me feel like this. But if the rest knows of you they will see a side of me that I don't want to reveal… a side I still can't really believe is there…

"Hey, Bruder. What are you doing out here?"

Oh, sorry, Bruder has just come. Can't talk anymore…

I turn my head towards him, then make my mouth widen in a grin. "I'm bored out of my mind. And you? What are you doing here, West?" He is big and burly in a way that shouldn't be possible for a kid like him, but he really grew a lot. And fast. Maybe a bit too fast…

"Well, just checking on you. You are acting weird again." He looks back into the house, and the sound of the TV tells me there is an American action movie going on. I know he sees me do this a lot, making him add the 'again', but really, I don't care. It's my choice if I will sit outside and freeze in the night.

I roll over onto my stomach and stand, wobbling a bit. "Wanna see the movie?" With a curt nod he pulls a beer forward and I grab it, grinning. "Awesome!" I sling my arm over his shoulder. From his sleeping-corner Gilbird stirs a bit, then peeps at us a single time for being noisy. Ludwig's dogs open their eyes as well and watch us before snorting at me and sleeping again, all of them ready to react if Ludwig should call them to attention.

I just sling the both of us into the sofa, knowing Bruder simple lets me do it. He is too strong for anyone to lead him around like this, but he doesn't mind my company. Then we both open our beers and I reach it towards him. "Cheers, Lud. Let us be bored by America's stupid stuff together, ja?"

He lets his own can of beer hit mine and I see the smallest twitch in the corners of his mouth. "Ja, let us do so." And then the expression gets more pronounced, becoming a real smile.

It makes me happy to see and with a warmth in my chest I drink my beer and enjoy being with my Bruder.

The only way this could be better was if you were with us.

* * *

I hope you like it, and that you think it keeps true to the characters ^^ I usually don't do Prussia in first person perspective because his way of thinking troubles me while I can make him act accordingly, but I hope this wasn't too bad. Thanks for reading.

And finally: Enjoy in joy ^^


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